Dissolution exhibition featuring Eric Rhein & Frederick Weston

Dissolution features works of art created by the first two cohorts of the annual Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship 2017-18 and 2018-19. The Fellows come from disparate backgrounds and engage in equally divergent art practices, and their artwork presents a multitude of positions within contemporary queer identity.

Queer artists have always existed at the forefront of politically engaged artmaking. Continuing that legacy, these works consider the role of queerness at the intersection of wider social relations, including class and inequality, race, and ecological crisis. Dissolution refers to artistic strategies of negation and undoing, in which representations of hierarchical and normative structures are fragmented, dissolved, or upended, in an act of resistance to the structures of oppression they uphold. Works in the exhibition subvert and reimagine signifiers of masculinity, imagine new forms of childhood, or resist linear narratives of progress. Through this embrace of negation, artists illustrate alternate possibilities and propose radically new ways of being.

The exhibition’s title is influenced by the chaos narrative featured in Arthur Frank’s book The Wounded Storyteller, stating “Chaos stories show how quickly the props that other stories depend on can be kicked away.” At a moment in history when the oppressive structures continue to try to confine us, may the breadth of these artistic offerings provide the viewer with fuel, hope, humor, and reprieve.

Organized by Angela Hallinan

Part 1: Feb 6 -Mar 13: Buzz Slutzky, Catalina Schliebener, Eric Rhein, Gwen Shockey, Kiyan Williams, Kristine Eudey, Max Colby, Michael Childress, Rodrigo Moreira, Vanessa Rondon.

Part 2: April 11-May 25: Boris Torres, Caitlin Rose Sweet, Carrie Hawks, Christopher Nuñez, Desiree Almoradie, Eduardo Shlomo Velazquez, Frederick Weston, Jason Villegas, Lola Flash, Nash Glynn, Sal Muñoz, Seyi Odebanjo.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship is a program designed to empower and support queer artists. Each year a cohort of 10-12 artists are invited to participate in a series of professional development workshops and pedagogical seminars that emphasize peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, and community building across disciplines to create a sustainable art practice.